Pornomelancolía / Pornomelancholia by Manuel Abramovich; Un varón / A Male by Fabián Hernández; La piel pulpo / Octopus Skin by Ana Cristina Barragán; Dos estaciones by Juan Pablo González; Vicenta B. by Carlos Lechuga and La hija de todas las rabias / Daughter of Rage by Laura Baumeister are the six Latin American titles in post-production to be presented in WIP Latam to an audience of professionals. All six works in progress will compete for the WIP Latam Industry Award and the Egeda Platino Industry Award for Best WIP Latam. The edition has received a total of 161 film submissions.
WIP Latam will run on September 20, 21 and 22 and will coincide with WIP Europe and the X Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum. The films will be available in the Festival Film Library, operated by CinandoVL, following their cinema screening and until Saturday, September 25.
The Argentine Manuel Abramovich will present Pornomelancolía / Pornomelancholia, which he developed in 2018 at the Festival’s Ikusmira Berriak residencies programme under the title of El Oasis. The filmmaker previously participated in San Sebastian with the feature film Soldado / Soldier (Zabaltegi-Tabakalera, 2017) and the short Blue Boy (Zabaltegi-Tabakalera, 2019), winner of the Best Short Film award at the BAFICI and of the Silver Bear for Best Short Film at Berlin Festival that same year. The film reflects on the limits of privacy in our times.
Un varón / A Male, selected for TorinoFilmLab’s FeatureLab 2019, is the first work from the Colombian director Fabián Hernández, whose shorts have been programmed at festivals all over the world. Un varón follows the story of Carlos, an adolescent struggling to shake off the prevailing masculinity stereotypes in his environment.
The Ecuadorian Ana Cristina Barragán, a post-graduate in Filmmaking at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola and participant in Berlinale Talents, will sho her second feature at WIP Latam, La piel pulpo / Octopus Skin, a tale of the complex family relationships between two teenage twins, their mother and older sister, who live isolated on a remote island. Alba (2016), her first film, won the Lions Film Award at Rotterdam Festival and a Special Mention in Horizontes Latinos.
Dos estaciones is the first fictional work from the Mexican Juan Pablo González, dedicated until now to the field of non-fiction. His last film, Caballerango (2018), landed awards at the Tacoma, Guadalajara and Dallas festivals, among others. Dos estaciones, a selected project at the 2019 Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum, follows the heir of a traditional tequila factory and her efforts to keep the business afloat in the face of pressure from foreign corporations.
The Cuban filmmaker Carlos Lechuga presents his third feature, Vicenta B. Melaza / Molasses (2012), his first film, competed in Rotterdam and won the Best Latin American Film Award in Malaga, while his second, Santa y Andrés / Santa & Andres was selected for Horizontes Latinos in 2018. Vicenta B., a santera in Havana with a special gift for seeing a person’s future, finds herself thrown into a crisis when her only son decides to leave the country.
The 2019 winner of the Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum Best Project Award, the EFAD-CAACI Europe-Latin America Co-Production Grant and ArteKino International Prize, La hija de todas las rabias / Daughter of Rage, is the first film from the Nicaraguan Laura Baumeister, who participated in the Critics’ Week at Cannes with her short film Isabel in Winter. The film stars María, a young girl living in the Managua rubbish dump who is abandoned by her mother uses her dreams as a way to explain what happened.
Many of the films presented by WIP Latam have gone on to enjoy a successful international career. Recent examples are Manuel Nieto’s El empleado y el patrón / The Employer and the Employee, selected for the Cannes Directors Fortnight in 2021 and which will be Horizontes Latinos closing film; Sin señas particulares / Identifying Features by Fernanda Valadez, winner of the Special Jury Prize for Best Screenplay, the World Cinema Dramatic Competition Audience Award at Sundance Festival (2020) and the Horizontes Award at San Sebastian Festival (2020), and El Príncipe / The Prince by Sebastián Muñoz, award-winner at Venice Festival’s Critics’ Week (2019). More information on success stories.
The WIP Latam Industry Award. Given by the companies Ad Hoc, Deluxe, Dolby, Laserfilm Cine y Vídeo, Nephilim Producciones, No Problem Sonido and Sherlock Films consisting of the post-production of one of the films screened until obtaining a DCP subtitled in English and its distribution in Spain.
The EGEDA Platino Industria Award for best WIP Latam. Coming with 30,000 euros gross for the majority producer of the winning film, thanks to the sponsorship of EGEDA, the Audiovisual Producers’ Rights Management Association.
The new Projeto Paradiso Award a philanthropic initiative of the Olga Rabinovich Institute. Coming with 10.000 US dollars gross for one of the eventual majority Brazilian productions in this section.
One screening at the Marché du Film - Festival de Cannes 2022 for the winners of the WIP Latam Industria Award and the EGEDA Platino Industria Award for Best WIP Latam.
wips@sansebastianfestival.com
Tel.: +34 943 481217
www.sansebastianfestival.com
|
María García, heir of a traditional tequila factory in Los Altos de Jalisco highlands, struggles to keep her plant afloat in a market increasingly dominated by foreign corporations. She hires Rafaela, a new director, who revives her hopes of surviving the myriad crises. When a plague and flood cause irreversible damage to María’s already limited agave plantation, she finds herself forced to take a stance against the foreign pressure intent on strangling her business – and part of her identity with it.
A vast garbage dump of Nicaragua's capital, immersed in a dense fog, is the home to María, a unique and imaginative girl. She lives with her mother Lilibeth, a herd of dogs and the newborn puppies about to be sold. When María accidentally poisons them, Lilibeth takes the desperate decision to leave her at a recycling factory where she is forced to work with other children. After this punishment the girl experiences great loneliness that soon turns into rage. She becomes friends with Tadeo, a sickly and faithful boy with a peculiar wisdom. María will learn to cope with her mother's abandonment using her dreams as a way to explain what happened.
Seventeen-year-old twins Iris and Ariel live with their mother and older sister Lía on a rocky island full of molluscs and reptiles. The adolescents have grown up isolated from the continent, in a fraternal relationship exceeding the limits of normal intimacy between siblings and in transcendental connection with nature. Following months caught up in a love-hate relationship with her children, their mother commits suicide. Her sudden death deeply affects the siblings and Iris, driven by a strong need to get away from her brother, decides to go to the city alone for the first time.
Lalo is a sex influencer: he posts photos of his nude body and homemade porn videos for his thousands of followers on social media. He controls his own life, but in private, when out of character, he seems to live in constant melancholy. Where does your own desire go when your life turns into a sex show? Pornomelancholia takes porn as its starting point to reflect on the relationship between sexuality and work, on living in the public eye yet feeling lonely, on the characters we build around ourselves to show ourselves to (or hide from) the world.
Carlos lives in a boarding school in the centre of Bogotá and longs to spend Christmas with his family. The circumstances around him force him to assume the male stereotype, in open contradiction to his true being. In private, Carlos acknowledges his sensitivity, his fragility and moves towards other forms of masculinity. At his 16 years of age, Carlos explores his sexual identity, discovers his fears, his desires, and all the things that real men never show.
Ever since colonial times, the island’s newspapers have referred to the Cuban santeras with great contempt. They called them witches and never used their names: they were the dark-skinned Marta A. or the brown-skinned Juana D. Vicenta B. lives in today’s Havana and has a special gift enabling her to see people's future. Every day a group of Cubans flocks to her home in search of solutions to their problems. When her only son decides to leave the country, Vicenta finds herself thrown into a crisis that prevents her from seeing not only what’s happening in her life, but also from understanding why she has been left alone in a country where everyone seems to have lost their faith.
With the support of